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Politics and Prose bookstore comes to D.C.’s premier waterfront destination. Located in The Wharf's District Square and surrounded by a great assortment of retail, restaurant, and cultural offerings, our new location brings a steady lineup of author events and, of course, books for everyone! Find out what’s coming up below.

Edge’s history of Southern food traditions is also a social and cultural history of the South. The illuminating lessons start with the title, which refers to the broth left in the pot after collard greens are boiled. Plantation owners ate the greens and left the broth for slaves, not realizing that the broth was where the nutrients were. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi and a columnist for the Oxford American, focuses the bulk of his narrative on the decades since the 1950s, tracing the central role of cooks and waiters in the civil rights movement, outlining contentions over culinary ownership, charting the back-to-the-land movement and the rise of fast foods, surveying the impact of immigration on Southern eating, and giving vivid portraits of key figures including Fannie Lou Hamer, Edna Lewis, Craig Claiborne, and many others.

Opened in 1965, the Watergate became synonymous with political malfeasance in 1972, when Nixon supporters burglarized the Democratic National Committee then headquartered there. While the complex has lent its “-gate” to many subsequent scandals, it has continued to be a choice address for D.C. movers and shakers. In this lively biography of the building The Washington Post once compared to the Titanic, Rodota, a political consultant and former writer and communications manager in the Reagan White House, profiles many of the Watergate’s residents and visitors. Following the activities of a cast that includes Anna Chennault and Tommy Corcoran, Martha and John Mitchell, Elizabeth and Bob Dole, Monica Lewinsky and her mother, and Condoleezza Rice and her piano, Rodota gives an entertaining and unconventional view of recent American politics.

Twenty-five years ago, Angels in America made its Broadway premier. It won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play, but Tony Kushner’s landmark work was always more than just a theater piece. It changed the way gay lives are represented in popular culture and the story of its many productions is also the story of AIDS and the struggle for gay rights. In this vibrant oral history, Butler, writer and director of productions including The Trump Card and Real Enemies, and Kois, editor and writer for Slate’s culture section, bring together the voices of more than two hundred people closely associated with Angels, from Meryl Streep and Mary-Louise Parker to directors, producers, historians, critics, and Kushner himself, to reminisce, tell stories, debate, and celebrate a piece that’s as vital today as it was when it opened in San Francisco in 1991.

Butler and Kois will be in conversation with Glen Weldon, co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. The three of them will be joined for a staged reading of one chapter from the book, featuring: Alexandra Petri, humor writer for the Washington Post and author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences; Mark Joseph Stern, a writer for Slate covering the law and LGBTQ issues; Jacob Brogan, host of the Slate podcast Working; and DC-based stage actors Kimberly Gilbert and Michael Kevin Darnall.

Drawing heavily from memoirs, CIA and FBI reports, magazine articles, and other research, the author presents a fast-paced account of a tumultuous time in U.S. history. Beginning with an introduction by Congressman John Lewis, the book places the events surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. into historical context. It explores the legacies of both King, a legendary civil rights activist, and James Earl Ray, the prison escapee who murdered him. Swanson’s extensive source notes will allow young historians to trace—or even continue—research.

Wharton started as a model and stylist for the Wilhelmina Modeling agency. He now hosts his own talk show, Paul Wharton Style, and is Lifestyle & Fashion Host on Fox 5’s Good Day DC morning show. In his new book, he shares the tips and secrets he’s learned from his many years of helping women look and feel their best. He starts with the basics of organizing your wardrobe efficiently, shows how to shop and dress with both your budget and your body in mind, and offers advice about makeup. But pulling it all together involves more than externals, and Wharton also tells you how to exercise, eat right, and sleep well.

Wharton will be in conversation with Maureen Umeh, Fox 5 Anchor and Good Day DC co-host.

One of the most talked about books of 2017, Lee’s second novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, is the story of four generations of a Korean family in Japan. The narrative starts in the early 1900s in Japanese-occupied Korea where Sunja, discovering that the father of her unborn child is married, rejects him and weds a pastor. The two move to Japan, and Sunja opens a small shop with her sister-in-law and raises two sons. One becomes a scholar, the second runs a prosperous pachinko parlor. Meanwhile, her former lover turns up, complicating a life already made difficult by displacement and discrimination. Expertly balancing epic sweep with intimate portrayals of individual lives, Lee explores not just the ideas of immigration, exile, and family, but movingly conveys the full emotional range of these issues. Lee will be in conversation with Book Maven Bethanne Patrick.

Hughes grew up in North Carolina in a family of modest means. Scholarships took him to an elite boarding school, then to Harvard, where he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. The three founded Facebook and became rich nearly overnight. They couldn’t have planned this, and Hughes attributes his success in large part to good luck. He also recognizes chance as a factor in what keeps others poor. Drawing on his personal experience and his work with the Economic Security Project, which he co-founded, Hughes argues that the best tool for ending poverty and rebuilding the middle class is a guaranteed income for the working poor, paid for by the wealthiest 1%.

In The Land Between Two Rivers, his second collection of essays, Sleigh trades his poet’s hat for the flak jacket of a journalist, reporting from war zones and refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, and Iraq. Striving for “an art in which bodily reality isn’t slighted,” Sleigh focuses on the lives of individuals and details their experiences of war, displacement, illness, and hope. He complements this reportage with probing, personal meditations on the role and responsibilities of art in divisive times, questions he refines further in the poems of House of Fact, House of Ruin. Sleigh’s tenth collection shows the poet as both socially engaged and self-aware, struggling “to see the filthiness / that keeps making me filthy” and to do something about it. Sleigh will be in conversation with Joshua Weiner, author of three collections of poetry and Berlin Notebook, prose about the refugee crisis.

Edge’s history of Southern food traditions is also a social and cultural history of the South. The illuminating lessons start with the title, which refers to the broth left in the pot after collard greens are boiled. Plantation owners ate the greens and left the broth for slaves, not realizing that the broth was where the nutrients were. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi and a columnist for the Oxford American, focuses the bulk of his narrative on the decades since the 1950s, tracing the central role of cooks and waiters in the civil rights movement, outlining contentions over culinary ownership, charting the back-to-the-land movement and the rise of fast foods, surveying the impact of immigration on Southern eating, and giving vivid portraits of key figures including Fannie Lou Hamer, Edna Lewis, Craig Claiborne, and many others.

Opened in 1965, the Watergate became synonymous with political malfeasance in 1972, when Nixon supporters burglarized the Democratic National Committee then headquartered there. While the complex has lent its “-gate” to many subsequent scandals, it has continued to be a choice address for D.C. movers and shakers. In this lively biography of the building The Washington Post once compared to the Titanic, Rodota, a political consultant and former writer and communications manager in the Reagan White House, profiles many of the Watergate’s residents and visitors. Following the activities of a cast that includes Anna Chennault and Tommy Corcoran, Martha and John Mitchell, Elizabeth and Bob Dole, Monica Lewinsky and her mother, and Condoleezza Rice and her piano, Rodota gives an entertaining and unconventional view of recent American politics.

Twenty-five years ago, Angels in America made its Broadway premier. It won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play, but Tony Kushner’s landmark work was always more than just a theater piece. It changed the way gay lives are represented in popular culture and the story of its many productions is also the story of AIDS and the struggle for gay rights. In this vibrant oral history, Butler, writer and director of productions including The Trump Card and Real Enemies, and Kois, editor and writer for Slate’s culture section, bring together the voices of more than two hundred people closely associated with Angels, from Meryl Streep and Mary-Louise Parker to directors, producers, historians, critics, and Kushner himself, to reminisce, tell stories, debate, and celebrate a piece that’s as vital today as it was when it opened in San Francisco in 1991.

Butler and Kois will be in conversation with Glen Weldon, co-host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. The three of them will be joined for a staged reading of one chapter from the book, featuring: Alexandra Petri, humor writer for the Washington Post and author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences; Mark Joseph Stern, a writer for Slate covering the law and LGBTQ issues; Jacob Brogan, host of the Slate podcast Working; and DC-based stage actors Kimberly Gilbert and Michael Kevin Darnall.

Drawing heavily from memoirs, CIA and FBI reports, magazine articles, and other research, the author presents a fast-paced account of a tumultuous time in U.S. history. Beginning with an introduction by Congressman John Lewis, the book places the events surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. into historical context. It explores the legacies of both King, a legendary civil rights activist, and James Earl Ray, the prison escapee who murdered him. Swanson’s extensive source notes will allow young historians to trace—or even continue—research.

Wharton started as a model and stylist for the Wilhelmina Modeling agency. He now hosts his own talk show, Paul Wharton Style, and is Lifestyle & Fashion Host on Fox 5’s Good Day DC morning show. In his new book, he shares the tips and secrets he’s learned from his many years of helping women look and feel their best. He starts with the basics of organizing your wardrobe efficiently, shows how to shop and dress with both your budget and your body in mind, and offers advice about makeup. But pulling it all together involves more than externals, and Wharton also tells you how to exercise, eat right, and sleep well.

Wharton will be in conversation with Maureen Umeh, Fox 5 Anchor and Good Day DC co-host.

One of the most talked about books of 2017, Lee’s second novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, is the story of four generations of a Korean family in Japan. The narrative starts in the early 1900s in Japanese-occupied Korea where Sunja, discovering that the father of her unborn child is married, rejects him and weds a pastor. The two move to Japan, and Sunja opens a small shop with her sister-in-law and raises two sons. One becomes a scholar, the second runs a prosperous pachinko parlor. Meanwhile, her former lover turns up, complicating a life already made difficult by displacement and discrimination. Expertly balancing epic sweep with intimate portrayals of individual lives, Lee explores not just the ideas of immigration, exile, and family, but movingly conveys the full emotional range of these issues. Lee will be in conversation with Book Maven Bethanne Patrick.

Hughes grew up in North Carolina in a family of modest means. Scholarships took him to an elite boarding school, then to Harvard, where he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. The three founded Facebook and became rich nearly overnight. They couldn’t have planned this, and Hughes attributes his success in large part to good luck. He also recognizes chance as a factor in what keeps others poor. Drawing on his personal experience and his work with the Economic Security Project, which he co-founded, Hughes argues that the best tool for ending poverty and rebuilding the middle class is a guaranteed income for the working poor, paid for by the wealthiest 1%.

In The Land Between Two Rivers, his second collection of essays, Sleigh trades his poet’s hat for the flak jacket of a journalist, reporting from war zones and refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, and Iraq. Striving for “an art in which bodily reality isn’t slighted,” Sleigh focuses on the lives of individuals and details their experiences of war, displacement, illness, and hope. He complements this reportage with probing, personal meditations on the role and responsibilities of art in divisive times, questions he refines further in the poems of House of Fact, House of Ruin. Sleigh’s tenth collection shows the poet as both socially engaged and self-aware, struggling “to see the filthiness / that keeps making me filthy” and to do something about it. Sleigh will be in conversation with Joshua Weiner, author of three collections of poetry and Berlin Notebook, prose about the refugee crisis.

All weekend long, Friday, March 2 through Sunday, March 4, we invite Politics & Prose members to take advantage of 20% off almost all of our current in-store inventory—books, DVDs, and CDs!

Members' online and phone purchases will also receive the same discounts as long as the items selected are on our shelves and payment is provided at the time of the order. Discounts do not apply to specially ordered items.